WASHINGTON - The
Administration's budget, released today, contradicts President Obama's
pledge
to reduce the nuclear weapons threat by working toward their
elimination,
according to a national network of groups in communities downwind and
downstream from U.S.
nuclear sites. Instead, the spending plan boosts funding for nuclear
weapons
production facilities by $625 million from last year.

The Alliance for Nuclear
Accountability (ANA) said that the Obama budget includes large
increases for a
new plutonium production facility in Los Alamos,
New Mexico and for a new highly
enriched
uranium production facility near Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
each estimated to cost about $3 billion. The budget also fails to list
a new privately
financed $700 million plant, which will produce nonnuclear components
for
nuclear weapons in Kansas City,
Missouri.

"The Administration has argued that the massive increases in
nuclear weapons proposed in this budget are necessary to maintain a
robust
nuclear deterrent," said Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico,
an ANA member group. "This is simply not true. The United States currently has
a
stockpile of 10,000 warheads that are certified as reliable. The new
production
facilities proposed in this budget will allow the Department of Energy
to
introduce untested nuclear weapons designs into the previously reliable
nuclear
stockpile."

"The plan described in this budget
is not about maintaining a reliable nuclear stockpile. It is a
multi-billion
dollar ‘radioactive pork' construction plan that will reconstitute the
nation's
ability to produce new nuclear warheads," said Ralph Hutchison,
Coordinator of
the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. "Building new nuclear
weapons
production facilities makes no sense as the U.S. prepares to
participate in
this spring's nuclear nonproliferations Treaty Review Conference, where
it will
try to persuade other nations to reduce arsenal sizes."

"We do applaud the budget's increased funding to secure
nuclear materials and support for international nonproliferation
treaties, and
regulatory controls," said ANA Program Director Nick Roth. "However,
the
threats from nuclear weapons include the environmental and health
damage to U.S.
communities that hosted weapons production facilities over the past 65
years. Yet
the budget for the Department of Energy's Environmental Management
budget was
reduced nearly $80 million."

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The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) is a national network of three-dozen grassroots and national groups representing the concerns of communities near U.S. nuclear weapons sites that are directly affected by 65 years of nuclear weapons production and waste contamination.

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